thank you, thank you!"
twittered Snow Bunting.

"Chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee,
chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee! how kind you are!" sang the Chickadees.

And Thistle Goldfinch? Yes, he remembered his summer song, for he sang
as they flew away:

"Swee-e-et-sweet-sweet-sweet-a-twitter-witter-witter-witter--wee-twea!"

notes.--l. The Robin's song is from "Bird Talks," by Mrs. A.D.T.
Whitney. 2. The fact upon which this story is based--that is of the
other birds adopting and warming the solitary Thistle Goldfinch--was
observed near Northampton, Mass., where robins and other migratory birds
sometimes spend the winter in the thick pine woods.

XIV. THE LITTLE SISTER'S VACATION*

* This story was first published in the Youth's Companion, vol. 77.

WINIFRED M. KIRKLAND

It was to be a glorious Christmas at Doctor Brower's. All "the
children"--little Peggy and her mother always spoke of the grown-up ones
as "the children"--were coming home. Mabel was coming from Ohio with
her big husband and her two babies, Minna and little Robin, the year-old
grandson whom the home family had never seen; Hazen was coming all the
way from the Johns Hopkins Medical School, and Arna was coming home from
her teaching in New York. It was a trial to Peggy that vacation did not
begin until the very day before Christmas, and then continued only one
niggardly week. After school hours she had helped her mother in the
Christmas preparations every day until she crept into bed at night with
aching arms and tired feet, to lie there tossing about, whether from
weariness or glad excitement she did not know.

"Not so hard, daughter," the doctor said to her once.

"Oh, papa," protested her mother, "when we're so busy, and Peggy is so
handy!"

"Not so hard," he repeated, with his eyes on fifteen-year-old Peggy's
delicate face, as, wearing her braids pinned up on her head and a
pinafore down to her toes, she stoned raisins and blanched almonds,
rolled bread crumbs and beat eggs, dusted and polished and made ready
for the children.

Finally, after a day of flying about, helping with the many last thing,
Peggy let down her braids and put on her new crimson shirtwaist, and
stood with her mother in the front doorway, for it was Christmas Eve at
last, and the station 'bus was rattling up with the first homecomers,
Arna and Hazen.

Then there were voices ringing up and down the dark street, and there
were happy tears in the mother'